Australian businessman Dick Smith has dismissed Anthony Albanese’s claim that nuclear power is too expensive.
The prime minister tweeted on Wednesday that opposition leader Peter Dutton “won’t put a price tag on his nuclear reactor plan, but he knows it will be a big bill.”
Albanese Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen in a recent press release cited CSIRO research indicating that nuclear power would be eight times more expensive than renewable electricity from wind and solar.
The CSIRO and AEMO GenCost 2023-24 report said building a full-scale nuclear reactor would cost $17 billion and Labor said energy bills and taxes would rise to pay for the increased costs.
But Mr Smith, who founded one of Australia’s first electronics retail chains, said the CSIRO and AEMO had misled the Albanian government.
“The Prime Minister says nuclear power is too expensive for Australia. He must be joking,” Smith said. News from heaven On Wednesday.
Mr Smith argued that what makes renewables the more expensive option is that, for them to provide stable power, they must also have large-scale batteries to store electricity.
“You need to combine them with three days of storage, not three hours as the CSIRO envisages. Batteries make them unaffordable,” he said.
Dick Smith said the Australian government’s science agency, CSIRO, had lied to the Albanian government by telling it that renewable electricity was the cheapest option.
Mr Smith noted that Pakistan and Bangladesh, which he said were “really poor countries”, have successfully used nuclear electricity.
“For me, nuclear power is the gold standard for baseload power and we really should have it,” he said.
The philanthropist and aviator argued that nuclear electricity was also better for the environment as it would not require large tracts of land to house infrastructure.
“You can have five acres of a nuclear power plant instead of destroying thousands of square kilometers.”
He said he believed Labor would have to reverse its position just as it did on nuclear submarines needed for Australia’s defence force, which it campaigned on in 2016.
“My friends told me when I advertised in The Australian for nuclear submarines: ‘Dick, Labor will never change its mind; you’re wasting your money,'” he said.
“One morning I woke up and what had happened? The Coalition had decided to build nuclear submarines and, lo and behold, Labour reversed course and backed the decision.
‘They changed 180 degrees because it was in the national interest.
“They will have to do the same with nuclear energy. The longer they delay, the worse it will be for our young people.”
Mr Albanese said electricity bills and taxes would rise if nuclear power was installed.
An advertisement placed in newspapers by Mr Smith says that “blackouts are expected” if Australia relies solely on wind and solar power
Mr Smith added that he was all for cutting emissions and taking action on climate change, but believed nuclear power was the better option than solar and wind to achieve this.
Mr Bowen recently insisted that Labour’s transition to renewable electricity was on track.
“Under Labour, we’ve had a 25 per cent increase in renewables on the national grid, record investment in batteries and storage and more than 330,000 rooftop solar installations last year alone,” he said.
“We have approved more than 50 renewable projects since the last election and are already halfway to meeting our 2030 renewable energy target for the national grid.”
The government has pledged to have 82 percent of the national electricity grid powered by solar and wind energy by 2030.